Austin's Texas-Size Google Fiber Dreams

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In the home of the South by Southwest festival, where "keeping it
weird" is the city's unofficial motto, Google Fiber is already
inspiring a thriving community of techies with bold and sometimes
offbeat ideas. Even a year before Google rolls out its 1-Gbps
Internet service, anticipation is fueling Texas-size dreams as
unique as the city of Austin itself.

Google said the rollout will be to residential customers first,
but it will also have small business options. Austin will be the
second Google Fiber rollout, following the introduction in Kansas
City last year. Google also plans to
bring Google Fiber to Provo, Utah, late this year.

Google Fiber will be the catalyst for the local Austin tech
community, said Jennifer Bullard, a local entrepreneur and
executive director of the Captivate Conference & Expo for
gaming, film and music tech. "It will validate Austin as a tech
hotspot and attract talent from around the country," she said.
Bullard is one of many locals we caught up with to talk about
Google Fiber.

Some big ideas are already percolating at Austin-based DejaSet
and Rockify, two startups plugged into the city's vibrant music
scene.

DejaSet collaborates with local bands by recording their live
performances and allowing fans to download audio of the show
instantly to their smartphone, for a price (about $5). Matt
Peterson, chief executive of DejaSet, imagines when the famous
Austin City Limits Music Festival and every downtown venue will
have 1-Gbps access. "Faster speeds could allow us to upload
lossless music recordings, or even video, to the cloud for
instant distribution to fans," he said.

Austin-based Rockify, a Web service that creates Pandora-like
personalized playlists of music videos, has similar fiber dreams.
Rockify chief executive Joel Korpi said fiber might open up new
opportunities to add live, streaming music to Rockify's content
offerings. "Buffering sucks," Korpi said. "With fiber, there is
no status bars or waiting. We can start dreaming about supporting
4K video resolutions for next-gen HDTVs." [See also: Fiber City:
Google Network Fuels Kansas City Startups ]

Superfast Internet access could change the game for established
companies, as well.

In the case of Savara Pharmaceuticals, blazing-fast Internet
service could help speed a cure for a deadly superbug, such as
the drug-resistant MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus), said Robert Neville, the company's CEO. Savara is a
new-breed pharmaceutical firm that outsources drug development to
a network of virtual laboratories. Virtual labs allow Savara to
keep costs low.

Fiber provides speeds that make sharing large data sets with a
lab in China feel like it's just down the hall, Neville said.
"It's one more way we can stay agile and bring products to market
faster."

Another firm is Aptus Technologies, a big-data company that helps
military and crime investigators slice, dice and parse terabytes
of data — and it needs fast Internet to do that. Whereas
competitors crunch data on a local device, Aptus pipes data to
the cloud, giving any customer browser-based access to its
tools.

"Our biggest bottleneck is transporting the data to the cloud,"
said Sean Forbes, the company’s chairman. No matter the cost,
Austin Internet service providers (ISPs) just don't offer the
bandwidth Forbes needs. Google Fiber advertises upload and
download speeds of 1-Gbps (even for homes), compared to the
fastest speed offered by Aptus' current ISP — 80 Mbps (download)
and 6 Mbps (upload). For perspective, with Google Fiber, it would
take about 15 seconds to download a full movie in HD.

But the real boon is for the little guy who wants to build
something new and now has access to the same — or better —
superfast Internet that well-established companies have, said
Kyle Cox, a director at the University of Texas’ Austin
Technology Incubator. "Calling it a game changer isn't fair —
it's a universe changer," Cox said. [See also:
100 Gbps Speed Coming to U.S. Research Network ]

Consider, for example, Hoot.Me, a firm that allows students to
host online study groups via video and instant messaging. It also
gives students one-click access to an expert to help them out of
a homework jam.

"Once Google Fiber makes it to local universities, it will be
exciting to see how 1-Gbps speeds can benefit not only Hoot.Me,
but students as well," said Michael Koetting, Hoot.Me co-founder
and a former University of Texas at Austin student. Bigger pipes
lets the service go beyond text-based chat and opens the door to
better HD-video interactions, he said.

Jenna Wanders, Google Fiber community manager, said Austin is a
lot like
Kansas City, where Google Fiber is just now rolling out.
"It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario,” she said. “We know
what the answer is; we just need to start asking the right
questions about what big ideas can Google Fiber fuel."